I love to cook and teach vegan cooking. In March 2006, I was inspired by cooking blogs like Vegan Lunchbox to post my dinner plate pictures.
I do my family's cooking. Since I met my wife in June 2004, I'm proud that I've not repeated a dinner for her; we weren't together every night, but since fall 2005, we've shared most dinners. I think I can keep up the unique creations through spring 2006 - maybe beyond! (Still going in March'08!)

Monday, June 06, 2016

I invited some friends over for dinner tonight and decided to make a layered main course of breaded eggplant (that I had frozen and prepared) with beans and marinara sauce. The cutlets only had 2g of fat per serving of the cutlets, with 5 servings in the packet, so I'll label this dish as almost no added fat (the nutrition label linked here seems to be for another product, as mine is clearly labeled vegan with 10g of fat for eating all of the cutlets). Here is what I did.

I put the beans, water, bouillon cube, and spinach into my Instant Pot pressure cooker and cooked for 28m.

While the beans were cooking, I sauteed a small onion cut into about 1" x 1/2" slices on a cast iron pan with no oil and simmered a nice marinara sauce with a store-bought sauce as the base and garlic, bell pepper, some of the cooked onion, nutritional yeast, salt, and oregano mixed in.

I also heated the eggplant slices in a 375°F oven for about 15 minutes.

After the beans were done, I waited a few minutes and gently released pressure, then served the beans atop the eggplant, with marinara on top of it all.

Results

Dinner came out well! I forgot to add the carmelized onion (the onion came out great even without oil) and also a garnish of fennel frond when I took the picture. I think that our guests enjoyed the meal; we certainly did.

Ideas for the future

Some capers with the marinara could have been nice. I wish that there were more eggplant. I should use this good breaded eggplant product more often!